


hundreds of thousands of gallons

by skvadern



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Drowning, God/Cleric Relationships, Hopeful Ending, Other, Pagan Gods, References to Depression, can you tell im a vast stan, dubious consent in a nonsexual context, it ends up a lot softer than im making it sound, thalassophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:29:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25508245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skvadern/pseuds/skvadern
Summary: Something about the colour of the water – maybe it’s reflecting the sky, shrouded in blank, pale cloud – makes the waves look like swirling fog, condensed and liquid.Zolf dreams of the ocean.
Relationships: Poseidon/Zolf Smith
Comments: 8
Kudos: 19





	hundreds of thousands of gallons

**Author's Note:**

> i genuinely dont know except that the sea is incredibly cool and god/cleric relationships fascinate me, esp when they're complicated as this one. dont ask me what point in the timeline this is set.  
> title from black eyes by david wirsig

Zolf knows he’s dreaming, which is pretty rare for him. He doesn’t have any idea where he is, what compass point, but it doesn’t really matter. The tiny rowboat his dreaming self is curled in floats in the kind of open ocean that doesn’t really have a location, no land in sight whichever way he turns. He could be anywhere.

For now, the water surrounding him is calm as glass, slow-moving waves catching the light like shifting facets carved in dark stone. They yield around the hull like no stone could, cradling the underside as gently as a mother holding her child. Something about the colour of the water – maybe it’s reflecting the sky, shrouded in blank, pale cloud – makes the waves look like swirling fog, condensed and liquid. Like the thick, heavy gas he’d seen once at a public alchemical exhibition.

Zolf knows better than to trust that it’ll last, but for the moment he’s happy to lean his head back, trail his hand off the side. The water has a vital, icy bite, and Zolf tilts his head to the side to watch his fingers slip in and out of it. When the little waves retreat, they leave a second skin over his, a film of liquid that glints in the softened light.

He's hardly even registered the shifting of the boat beneath him, he’s so familiar with the feeling, but he does notice when it starts to properly move. Waves begin to lap at his boat with just a little more force, and then a little more, and then more. In minutes, Zolf’s little wooden rowboat is being flung side to side like he’s a mouse being toyed with by a cat. If the mouse was the size of an insect. If the cat was the size of the entire sky.

“And what the hell is this meant to be about, then?” he growls, clutching at the sides of the vessel that suddenly feels far too small – but what wouldn’t be, compared to the endless waters that surround him, melting off into a faraway horizon? “My inner turmoil or something?”

Laughter bubbles up from the sea underneath him, shaking through the hull of his boat and shuddering through his chest. It’s more of a vibration than a sound; the bassy rumble of an earthquake, the booming roar of thunder. The sheer power of it steals his breath, his thoughts, like he’s a rock resting on a faultline. _The laughter of a God_ , Zolf thinks, punch-drunk and struggling to hold his nerve.

Like a mountain flexing its stony muscles, a wave larger than any yet scoops his boat out from under him, neatly capsizing it. For a moment, Zolf’s flying, unmoored and spinning through space – and then he’s caught, tossed into freezing, grasping blood-salty waters that suck at him eagerly, dragging him deeper into their embrace.

Zolf clamps his mouth shut, kicks his legs, but in this dream he still has his pegleg, and he can’t get enough purchase to resist the strength of the ocean around him. As if he’d have had a chance anyway, now the ocean has decided it wants him.

Memories of the first time he’d drowned roil in his head – the helplessness of it, being tossed around by swirling storm-strong waves, able to snatch only tiny, desperate breaths before he was hauled under the surface again. But no, this is different – that first time, the worst part had been how utterly mindless the thing killing him was. The knowledge that Zolf was moments away from being destroyed by something that didn’t even register his existence, had no idea he was even there.

There’s a personality to these currents, how they bat at him and twist through his hair like fingers, supporting under his arse and raising him to take a breath before twining around him and pulling him back down into the blurry blue landscape under the surface. Not only does this monstrously vast being know he’s there, it _wants_ him there. _He_ wants him there.

“Poseidon!” Zolf gasps, seawater scorching his lungs as he’s pulled back under the surface before the word even leaves his mouth. The water streaming through his hand presses into his palms, just for a moment, like the touch of a giant hand.

Whatever else he was going to say, Poseidon doesn’t give him the chance. Before he can waste any more breath, a sledgehammer-strong wave smacks right into his chest. The pain is dull and spread, and there’s no tell-tale muffled snap of a rib breaking, but the force of it knocks the air right out of Zolf’s lungs. His eyes squeeze shut and he gasps – stupid instincts, _stupid_ – and cold, salt-sharp seawater pours into his mouth and nose. It _burns_ , just like he remembers, and Zolf’s cry of terror and pain is muffled by the water pressing in on all sides. Pressing _inside_ him, filling up his chest cavity, claiming him for the ocean.

Gods above and below, it feels _right_. More proper, more correct than air has in a very long time.

He waits for the pain, for the last spasming panic of his land-built body to try and survive this, and is dimly surprised when it never comes. There’s no pressure to draw breath, of air or water. When he parts his lips, the seawater inside him circulates into and out of him slowly, as if he’s just another corner of its domain.

As if they’ve gotten what they wanted, the currents stop buffeting him around. Calm now, they curl around him gently, cup him in a silken embrace that squeezes him like a hug. Gods, when was the last time he was hugged?

**_See?_** something croons, the word humming through the water like whale-song. Zolf’s eyes snap open but there’s no one there, no stern face looming out of the endless blue surrounding him. Probably for the best – there’s legends of what happens to people who see the Gods face to face, and they rarely have happy endings.

The salt isn’t stinging his eyes anymore, and the cold isn’t cutting into his flesh. Now, the water curled around him feels warm as sunlight, even as it tugs him down further and further, deeper into the darkening vastness spread out below him.

Zolf feels… filled. Held. Water around him, in him, at the mercy of his God and for once that doesn’t scare him one bit.

Now his eyes have stopped burning and he’s not fighting for his life, Zolf can turn and look around him, and see that he’s not alone in this dream-ocean. Jellyfish drifting along on an ocean current, shimmering shoals of fish the size of warships, what looks to be a great white shark gliding by in the distance. Countless ocean creatures going about their lives around him; some distant, blurry blue shapes, some darting close enough that they brush sudden and cool against his skin. As his eyes adjust, Zolf can even see the swirling soup of particles around him in the water, bits and pieces of dead fish and seaweed and tiny animals.

When he’d first gotten on a ship, Zolf had thought about the ocean the same way most navy sailors do – a shifting, solid monolith of water, to be respected and feared like Dad had always told him to respect and fear the earth they mined. It’d taken him a while to get his head around the fact that the sea he’d sailed through isn’t a featureless desert of salty water. It’s _alive_ , a superorganism of interconnecting currents and teeming life held together in a balanced web, filling the void between continents and holding the world together. Giving life just as it takes it away.

His God is more than just storms, death and destruction. And this landscape, alien and vast and flourishing all around him, is His domain, His seat of power.

And Zolf, His cleric, belongs here. Everything has its place here, feeding and being fed upon and living and dying, and Zolf is no different. For once, he’s right where he’s meant to be.

The water around his chest squeezes tighter – not tight enough to crush him, just like the firmest hug he’s had in a very long time – and Zolf can feel Poseidon’s regard heavy on him, heavy as the deep ocean. Poseidon has him; His tiny, helpless cleric, His to dash against the rocks and His to cradle in a megaton-heavy embrace. And for once, that’s not scary. That’s not something Zolf needs to worry about – if he’s doing it right, fulfilling Poseidon’s wishes, doing what he’s supposed to do.

Here, now, Zolf knows exactly what he’s supposed to do. Float, and be held, and be part of the world his God rules. No fighting, no drowning, no messages he can’t interpret, no doubt.

Just drifting, secure in the watery palm of a being older and greater than he can ever comprehend, that has nonetheless chosen him as His own. Zolf can do that much, at least.

If he squints, Zolf thinks he can see something beneath him, curled in the midnight depths he’s being drawn towards. Something dark and impossibly huge, shifting ever so slight so that its outline is just visible against the deep blue. Zolf surprises himself by feeling no fear of it, none at all.

He untenses his last muscle and relaxes into the water, into his God’s hold. However he’ll feel about that little surrender tomorrow, he can deal with tomorrow. For once night, Zolf is going to savour his certainty.

With a silent prayer of thanks to Posiedon, Zolf tilts his body – which feels stronger, in this place, sleeker, built for the underwater world he finds himself in – and swims down.


End file.
